Andrew Penny was born in Hull and entered the Royal Manchester College of Music in 1971 to study the clarinet with Sidney Fell. As a postgraduate he was the first holder of the Rothschild Scholarship in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music, studying with Sir Charles Groves and Timothy Reynish, subsequently receiving the Ricordi Prize. He gained invaluable experience with the Opera Unit during this time and was associated with many of the operas presented by the college in its early years both in Manchester and at Sadlers Wells Theatre. He also studied with Sir Edward Downes on courses in Holland and on the BBC Conductors Seminar in 1985. Since 1992 he has made over 35 recordings for the Naxos and Marco Polo labels. Much of the repertoire is of British Music and includes symphonies by Sir Malcolm Arnold and Havergal Brian, film music by Vaughan Williams and Walton, theatre music by Sullivan and Holbrooke and light music by Coates and Arnold. His complete cycle of the nine Symphonies by Arnold was produced in time for the composer’s eightieth birthday in October 2001 and has subsequently become BBC Music Magazine’s top recommendation. In the Gramophone Awards of 1999 the Editor’s Choice Award was made to 22 Naxos discs as an outstanding contribution to 20th-century British Music. Three of those releases were conducted by Andrew Penny; the Arnold Third and Fourth Symphonies (8.553739) and two discs of Walton’s music for the Olivier films of Shakespeare’s Henry V, Hamlet and As You Like It. In October 2010 his première recordings of the complete Shakespearean Overtures by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco were released on two Naxos discs (8.572500 & 8.572501). Andrew Penny became musical director of the Hull Philharmonic Orchestra in 1982.

Maestro’s Musings – Jeremy Siepmann talks to the British conductor Andrew Penny